“How’s that?”
She cleared hers as well, moved over to stand beside him at the sink.
“My father, I told you, was a monster,” said Charlie. “But he was a master con artist—until it got him killed.”
“How?” she asked.
“That’s a story for another night. But he taught me everything I know about making the most out of people, situations, and life.”
“You thought she had more, didn’t you?”
He rinsed the plate, washed it with the sponge and soap. The scent of lilac was strong and soothing.
“I did think she had more. When I first met her, she presented like someone with money. Expensive bag and shoes, a store that looked successful, a nice house.”
“You were going to con her?”
“No,” he said quickly. He rinsed the dish and put it in the rack. “Maybe. I don’t know. But it was clear pretty fast that Stella was no mark. She intrigued me. Then, I broke a few of my own rules. I stayed too long. I got—distracted from the game.”
“Distracted by what?”
But she already knew the answer.
“Distracted by you.”
Pearl was fifteen but she looked older, she felt older. She knew more than people twice her age. Some of the men Stella brought home, they stared. If her mother noticed, the offender got kicked right out. It wasn’t like that with Charlie. There was something there, something between them. But it wasn’t weird. Not weird like that.
He washed her dish, too. She dried them and placed them back in the cabinet, wiped down the counter. It already felt like home.
“I cared about Stella,” he said. “I wanted to help her—and you. But she wouldn’t let me. She was already too far gone.”
Pearl knew what he meant. Her mother, always in a rush, seemed like she was either arriving or leaving too late. It never seemed as if she was there, present. She was always looking to make her escape. And now that she was gone, Pearl wasn’t sure what she’d left behind, what there was to remember her by. Even her more recent memories were blurred, fading fast.
“So, first, we’ll get you enrolled to finish school online. I’ll figure out the whole identity thing.”
The whole identity thing, as if who she had been was an outfit they could change.
“How? How does that work?”
“I have contacts, people who can help.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s not important now,” he said. “But if you want to learn, I’ll teach you sometime. Things are harder than they used to be. But there are ways to live off the grid.”
It would be a while before he told her about his work, about the network of people he knew and how they all operated. She kept quiet now; she was tired. The world was something other than she imagined it to be, and it was exhausting to find her way.
“And, hey,” he said. “It’s okay to grieve for your mother. It’s okay to be sad or scared. We’re going to get through this.”
She searched inside herself for feeling, and, as usual, she came up empty.
“I guess we all grieve differently.”
Or not at all. What if there’s nothing inside me? she wanted to ask. She felt like she could ask Charlie that, like he wouldn’t judge her. What if there’s just a sucking black emptiness where my soul should be? If that’s true, then what does that make me? Even those thoughts, those questions, didn’t frighten her—though she knew that they probably should. But, still, she kept quiet.
“But if you need to talk about it—”
He let the sentence trail.
“Yeah,” she said. “I get it.”
They finished cleaning in silence.
In the living room, Charlie made a fire with the small amount of wood he found outside the back door. She sat on the floor and held her hands up to the warmth, felt the heat on her face. He stayed on the couch behind her, reclining there with his eyes closed. The furniture was plush, comfortable, the place decorated tastefully, simply with a Southwestern flair—cow skull on the wall, oil paintings of deserts and sunset skies, starry nights and howling coyotes. Where were they? What was this place? How did they get here?
Maybe I’m dead, she thought. Maybe this is what comes next.
“You’re going to need a new name, okay?” he said into the quiet. “I will, too.”
A new name. A new self. That was interesting, an idea she liked. The girl in the mirror with the unfamiliar haircut and haunted eyes. Yes, she needed a new name.
“Portia? Delilah? Cleopatra? Scheherazade?” she offered to the flames, then turned to check his reaction.
He gave her a lift of his eyebrows, a wry smile.
“Something simple, nondescript. Something that doesn’t call attention.”
“How about Anne?”
He nodded. “That works. Like Anne of Green Gables. Not like Ayn Rand, right?”
“Right,” she said. “Sweet, innocent, good-hearted Anne. What about you?”
“I’ll give it some thought.”
“Othello? Humbert? Mr. Knightly? Svengali?”
That earned her a guffaw.
“You’re officially off the name committee,” he said.
“How about Bob?” she offered.
“Closer,” he said. “For our purposes, though, as we move into whatever the next game is, it’s best if people think I’m your father.”
She didn’t know what he meant by “the next game,” but she had an inkling. She’d already learned to play along with him.
“So, you’re Bob the widower?”
“Widower is a bit high-profile—engendering too much sympathy attention; it can be an attractor for a certain type of woman. I think she left me, your mom. Maybe she left us. She remarried, isn’t much of a mother to you. But she’s in and out of the picture.”
“So you want me to call you Dad?”
“Are you okay with that?”
“It sounds a little normie, doesn’t it?”
“That’s what we’re going for,” he said with another chuckle. She liked the sound of his laughter; it was big and full-bodied. “What do you want to call me?”
“I think,” she said, moving over to lean against the couch where he was lying. “I think I’ll call you Pop.”
He dropped a hand on the crown of her head, let it travel over her hair to her shoulder. She took his silence as assent. They sat a while like that, and then she rose, her fatigue so heavy now she could barely keep her eyes open.
“Good night, Anne,” he said, his voice soft, the fire crackling.
“Good night, Pop.”
NINETEEN
Anne
Anne always thought of herself in the name she was currently using the most. She was Anne most of the time, or had been recently. Now that she was no longer working in Hugh’s office, and she was done with Hugh, that self would start to fade. Who would she be next? There had been so many names, so many selves, all of them lies, all of them true. Maybe it would be Martha. Sometimes inside, she still heard her true name, Pearl. But rarely. More rarely all the time.
Whoever she was, she settled in before the crackling fireplace as darkness fell outside. She had her laptop open, a steaming cup of tea on the table beside the couch. Outside, the temperature had dropped, and the wind howled.